A COUPLE embroiled in the Alder Hey organs scandal claim their search for the truth led them to dig up the casket containing their dead baby's body parts.

Julie Wilkinson and Nick Williams, who have already endured three funerals for their little son Owen, were told a box buried in his grave at St Chad's Church contained his heart. The heart was removed without consent by doctors at the Liverpool children's hospital after his death in 1999.

But nagging doubts about the contents of the casket forced Nick to take action and on Thursday, accompanied by a vicar and a pathologist, he exhumed the box.

He was horrified to find many other body parts in the casket, including Owen's brain.

Now the the couple are demanding an explanation and an apology from the doctors responsible for 'desecrating' their son's body.

They fear their ghoulish discovery could open the floodgates as more parents embroiled in the controversial organ retention scandal start to doubt if their own children were buried with the correct body parts.

Nick, who lives with Julie in Over, said: 'We are disgusted. We were told the casket contained just Owen's heart. But we found much, much more and it is clear the hospital has lied to us right from the start.

'We felt we had to exhume the casket to see what had really been buried because after everything that has happened, we don't trust anyone.'

They say Dick Van Velson, the doctor named and shamed over the scandal, has been made a scapegoat and that others should also be made to answer for their actions. Van Velson left the hospital in 1995, but organs were taken from Owen's body in 1999.

Owen died at Leighton Hospital aged just over four months after suffering heart problems from birth.

After his funeral, Nick and Julie held a second burial service after they discovered he had been laid to rest without his heart. Then a third funeral was held after the discovery of a further 31 pieces of his body.

Julie said: 'It wouldn't be so bad if the organs had actually been used for research or to save someone else's life, but they have just been lying around in a store room.

'We didn't give permission for them to take his organs and they stripped him. We want an apology and an explanation.'

A spokesman at Alder Hey said the hospital cannot comment on individual cases. He said: 'In future parents will be able to view the caskets so they can see what's being buried. No parents should have to suffer what this couple have been through.'